Harrison Ford had already shown up, shot off his usual wisecracks, grinned slyly a few times, and done justice to the aging hero thing. But the moment she appeared in The Force Awakens - and it takes a while for that moment to arrive - I was reduced to a puddle. I’ve never thought of Carrie Fisher as a particularly great actor, or given her much thought at all. General Organa (bka Leia) in “The Force Awakens.” Lucasfilm Ltd. As any diehard Star Wars fan could tell you, Kershner was the director of The Empire Strikes Back. Would you like to know who said that? You would. One of the first results was this quote: “There’s nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face.” Thinking I was forcing a pretty lousy metaphor, but figuring other people had probably forced the same lousy metaphor, I did some Googling. The notion that ol’ Carrie was a landscape in and of herself came to me the day after I saw the movie. And it wasn’t one I expected to care about at all. It wasn’t one that inspired a location scout to text J.J. (I have to admit this isn’t the first time I’ve spent precious energy thinking too hard about this topic I might have had a hand in this old April Fools’ Ask Umbra column about what the Star Wars planets can teach us.)īut the landscape that moved me the most wasn’t forest or island or desert or mountain. Given all this gorgeousness, I spent a lot of time studying the scenes behind the action. You see the whole mountain range instead of just the snowy space between the peaks the whole seascape instead of just the island. They are grander in scale than in the old movies, if memory serves (I haven’t rewatched the trilogies lately, but hey, the holidays are coming). Heavy-handed as they are, the locations are undeniably gorgeous. An island that plays a pivotal part in the movie is rocky, steep, isolated - and also impossibly verdant. When that character glimpses a forest canopy for the first time, she sees both hope and opportunity, murmuring, “I never knew there was so much green in the galaxy.” A climactic battle - central not only to the plot but also to the development of the combatants’ respective understanding of their abilities - occurs in a tangled, snowy forest. Thirst-inducing expanses of sand provide the background for a main character’s hopeless, poverty-stricken existence. A thundering bad-guy speech is delivered in the middle of a frozen, snow-swept mountain range. In that vein, the use of landscape seems to have also been huge-ified. You had a bad-guy weapon that could destroy a planet? I’ve got one that can destroy the entire universe … and it’s freakin’ huge.” Call it a classic case of lightsaber envy. Actually, this seemed to be his MO with the entire movie: “Oh, you had a creepy holographic mastermind? I have one who’s creepy too, and freakin’ huge. Awe, despair, fear, hope - they all played out against barren deserts, bustling cities, Arctic wastelands, and lush forests. He chose some stunning places to film, as this slideshow my friend helped put together for Budget Travel shows, and he used those settings to reinforce emotion. Say what you will about George Lucas, the guy had a knack for including nature in his viewer-bludgeoning arsenal. Abrams had in mind.įor a movie franchise set in space, Star Wars has always put a lot of emphasis on terra firma. And walked out three hours later thinking about nothing but landscapes and what it means to be a woman. Walked across the sea of pavement trying not to hear what moviegoers who had just left the theater were saying. So I went the next day, Bowling Alone-style: Drove in my car, by myself, to a megaplex. But I live in a Star Wars-infused household, and it became obvious after my fella saw it on opening night that conversation was going to be strained until we could hash over the latest installment together. I hadn’t planned to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens until the hype died down. I tried not to give away the really juicy stuff. Warning: There is information in this article that could be considered spoiler-ish, if America continues its astonishing ability to keep its mouth shut about this movie.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |